Yellow Peril by Tze Ming Mok

Watch Ghost in the Shell if it's retro anime-tits you're after. But as for Auckland artist Hye Rim Lee - let's be frank here: Super Bunny she may be, but her video art sucks big bunny-ass. Conceptually shallow to start with, it has also been exactly the same crap animation for the last three years.

I wish they'd give her money to her compatriot Jae Hoon Lee instead. He could say they're related and just switch the bank accounts. If you get the chance, visit the blustery forecourt of Wellington City Gallery to spend a very long time mesmerised in front of 'Leaf', which Tessa Laird writes about in the Listener with her usual finesse. Bunny ass it ain't.

Still, the re-opening of the Everlasting Toki Show provided me with the opportunity to catch up with fellow Singaporean 'LeRoi Middleton' (name changed to protect LeRoi from repercussions from the Singaporean gahmen and from Hye Rim Lee). That's right, this is yet another post about Singapore Rebel - hah! Sucked in! You thought it would be all art-bitching and manga!

Well okay, like me, 'LeRoi' hated Hye Rim's art, had also caught Singapore Rebel at the Human Rights Film Festival, and had been moved to email the documentary-maker Martyn See a message of support.

'I found it pretty moving. I was getting teary,' I confessed.
'Yeah? It just made me angry' said 'LeRoi'. And he's a medical specialist of chill.
'Oh I'm always angry.'
What were we talking about? The awfulness of the art, or the awfulness of the repressive state apparatus of Singapore?

There are plenty of states that are more repressive than Singapore. But nothing festers under the skin quite like ongoing injustice in the Old Country, especially when that country is constantly held up here as a paragon of social order and economic modernity. I know, I know, 'Singapore Rebel'? Would that be like, 'Remuera Rebel'? Or even, 'Reserve Bank Rebel'?

From a Herald interview with The Don, a longtime member of Amnesty International.

Herald: Name one of your heroes
DB: Am I allowed two? Lee Kwan Yew [former Prime Minister of Singapore] is one.

Funny spelling of Lee Kuan Yew the Herald has there. They probably didn't want to mix him up with Lee Kuan Yew the eugenicist, or
Lee Kuan Yew the executioner, torturer, and terroriser of political opponents. Or this Lee Kuan Yew:

I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yet, if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn't be here today. And I say without the slightest remorse, that we wouldn't be here, we would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened on very personal matters - who your neighbour is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use. We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think.

Don Brash goes on:

Another [hero] is Nelson Mandela.

Well, that's all right then.

I've had a bit of an exchange with Martyn See, although as he's under police investigation for making his fairly restrained and straightforward low-budget short, it's best that I don't publicise any of his private comments. He did ask if he could put some of my remarks about his documentary and Singapore on his blogsite http://singaporerebel.blogspot.com/, and even offered to give me a pseudonym, such is the pervasive climate of political fear (it's only paranoia if your fear is not well-founded). "Dude!" I wrote before lapsing into Singaporean syntax, "I'm New Zealand citizen only! So is my whole family here. I don't need to use a pseudonym."

The freedom to say and write whatever you want in good faith is a universal human right - but it often feels like a privilege. 'LeRoi' felt the urge to do more for Martyn and for Singapore as a whole, but he's still actually a Singaporean citizen. And this is why he's 'LeRoi' here today. I always liked the name 'LeRoi', for Fame, and LeRoi Jones, who also changed his name for political reasons.

singabloodypore has the trailers and the link to the bittorrent download of Singapore Rebel.

How lucky we are in Auckland - at least three budding Chinatowns, two little Koreas, and two Chinese reporters ensconced at the Herald itself (and I don't mean the Chinese Herald). One of whom I may not actually be related to. So let's hear it for the plucky invaders sticking it out in Christchurch, where independent journalist Lincoln Tan is a lone voice in the milky wilderness.

Lincoln, a Singaporean (yes, on a roll here...) became so frustrated at being denied job-interviews when he arrived in New Zealand, that he set up his own paper. iBall is Christchurch's only bilingual newspaper, and tackles angles that mainstream media doesn't care for. According to Lincoln, there is still not a single Asian journalist in any mainstream paper in Christchurch.

Some of us like to think this is a fair-minded country, but... Got a Chinky name? Speak fluent English? Good luck getting a job interview. I've been there. To show you how bad it is, I actually wrote this story but had to change my name to Julie Middleton to get it published in the MSM.

And not all migrants discriminated against in the job-market change their name or start their own newspaper. As this month's just-released issue of iBall reports:

['Mimi'] first came to New Zealand as an international student in Auckland, and responded to an advertisement looking for women to work in a gentlemen’s club.

However, Mimi said that she was unprepared for what the working conditions were for massage parlour girls – which was even worse for girls from foreign countries.

...

She said that she had tried to get a proper job after graduating, but all she received were rejection letters. She then went through a period of depression.

“Nobody wants to become an escort or a prostitute if they have a choice,” Mimi said. “But if we want to support ourselves living in a foreign land, we have to make money. Working underground as a kitchen hand is not going to pay my rent.”

iBall's website is still under construction, but you can email their office and put yourself on the mailing list. Lincoln will be speaking in Banana Auckland on Banana Freedom of Banana Speech & Banana Expression in the Banana Republic session of the Banana Conference. The conference website went live this week, and registrations are filling up fast - be in quick.

Southeast Asians seem a comparatively feisty bunch when let loose on the West. S'porean Lincoln led the Christchurch anti-racism rally of 2004 along with Hock Lee, a Malaysian lawyer. Going down the list of the Asian massive that headed the Wellington repeat of this feat later that year, and you had:

Pancha Narayanan, NZ Federation of Ethnic Councils (Singapore)
Silvia Zonoobi, Multicultural Services Centre/Alay Migrant Community Centre (Philippines)
Lee Tan, Service and Food Workers Union (Malaysia) and,
Me for Multicultural Aotearoa (Singapore/Malaysia/Roskill).

Nanyang represent.

We are probably freaks though. As Lincoln says in the current iBall editorial:

I received a telephone call last week from my mother in Singapore. She received a copy of the Asia Down Under report on iBall, and she had seen some of the front-page news items which made her concerned.

“Don’t you get into any controversy, don’t forget you are not in your own country, so don’t meddle with other people’s affairs” she warned, reminding me of the time I got into trouble with a Singapore MP on a story I did at the start of my journalism career in Singapore. It is sad - but what she said actually reflects how many migrants feel.

Meanwhile, it has been brought to my attention that the National Front has been rallying its membership to flame the page on The Big Idea that hosts a copy of an essay I wrote. It confirmed what you might expect - that there are only five people in the National Front. My favourite comment:

F[*]CKIN HELL!
Give prize money to some random asian immagrant when a hard working white man gets nothing! Why come to NZ and write an essay... Write one in your own country and get their prizemoney! !!!!

...um, well...

Aw hell, it's just too easy.

Ever suspect that the Tyrell Corporation is popping thousands of Mr Browns out of clone pods straight into country-specific political current affairs techie-geek blog stardom, with regionally appropriate names tacked on the front? Singapore hasn't even bothered to add the usual 'Kevin', 'Kelvin', 'Calvin', 'Steven', 'Martin', 'Marvin' or 'Mervin'.

Here he is: Singapore's Russell Brown. Mr Brown. Really. Mr Brown is Singapore's most popular and possibly longest-serving blogger (...after their version of Bizgirl of course, who just knocked him out of the water at the Asian bloggies. Well, I don't think Xiaxue is a real person...)

Like ours, Singapore's Mr Brown also has print-media interests, has been instrumental in setting up a Singaporean blog hub, and blogs personally on Singaporean life and times, other bloggers, techie geek developments, his partner of 16 years, his autistic kid, and as much on politics as is actually possible in Singapore without being sued for defamation.

'Uncanny' is the translation of Freud's notion of the Unheimlich - exactly like, yet not like, home. This particular incidence of uncanniness is strangely comforting for me - two versions of home have merged in a dreamworld. During this steaming Auckland subtropical summer just gone, the downtown CBD even smelt like the Singaporean monsoon season. Am I awake as I type?

Russell might find it a bit freaky though.

There are however, bits of Singapore that I and my parents would be pleased to leave in Singapore. Check out the original CNA story about the Singaporean blogger Acidflask who was threatened last week with a defamation suit for blogging. Here are some signs that you're in trouble because of your blog in Singapore, and Singapore Ink and Mr Brown's entries on and links to the ensuing blogosphere frenzy.

Being sued for defamation is the Singaporean version of the Sudanese State Security white pick-up truck pulling up outside your community centre, or the Public Security Bureau arriving suddenly in its Gong An vans on the Mainland. When you can sue for defamation, why bother with the handcuffs, electrodes and baseball bats? To give you an idea of what they like to sue for in Singapore: if an opposition politician suggests to an international newspaper that the Singaporean government stifles dissent through the use of its compliant judiciary, the government will utilise its compliant judiciary to uphold its own reputation, by suing for defamation, and winning.

So: the snake eats its own tail, and wonders why there's a rattle in its throat. Don Brash's favourite place, this.

Thanks to Angry Asian Man for the link to this article, which precipated all this Old Country net-communion. Do have a look at this interesting exchange between Simonworld (Hong Kong's Mr Brown) and Mr Brown on language, outlets for political and social expression, and waning colonialism - structured around a Hong Kong vs Singapore blogosphere throwdown.

It has given me great pleasure to give out these introductory calling cards of the English-language East and Southeast Asian blogosphere. But there's more that you're missing out on, which I can't help with at this stage. Like Mr Brown and others of the Singaporean 'ACS' school, "our Chinese very lousy." I sure as hell don't read Chinese language sites, especially not the old-form/fanti used in Hong Kong. Maybe this is a job for everyone's new favourite Wellingtonian ex-Howick Hongky 1.5er, Keith Ng, who can read and speak Chinese but not type it. Whereas I can speak and type Chinese, but can't read it. How is this possible? I will attempt to explain this further in an occasional forthcoming series of resource entries for the querulous invadee.

Singlish though, I can still dip into. I mean, all-da-time this grammar-grammar! Why you still talk so like dat-ah? Your dictionary so lagi-some-more?

Don't forget the banned film Singapore Rebel is playing this Friday at the Academy. Can't come is very rugi only.

New find: The maker of Singapore Rebel blogs on his ongoing troubles with the police here. His name is ...ahem ...Martyn.

Obviously, I am related to all Asian people, and I represent all of Asia. To prove my point, I will now demonstrate how I am personally related to every single Asian film in the Human Rights Film Festival (Auckland 12-19 May, Wellington 25 May-1 June).

Behind the Labels, about sweatshop workers on the US territory of Saipan, and Children, about sweatshop workers anywhere. Actually, in the publicity photos they're all Chinese workers. Obviously we're related!

Mercy, AIDS orphans in Thailand. My paternal grandmother was born and raised in Thailand. I still have relatives there. We're related!

Reframe, a New Zealand documentary about a New Zealand Human Rights lawyer in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. Director Jo Luping and lawyer Dianne Luping's parents are Malaysian Chinese. My dad's Malaysian Chinese! We're related!

Also, with regard to the other Palestinian/Israeli films in the festival, such as Promises - Palestine is an associate-member of the
Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutes, along with Afghanistan and Jordan! We're related!

Greed and Grievance, Aceh's War (short film). Hmm... My Malaysian grandfather's fourth wife is from an old Indonesian Chinese family... but probably more pertinently, I once resettled an Acehnese refugee who had a mullet which made him look just like my brother in 1986. We're related!

Shipbreakers. The world dumps its worn out machinery in Asia, in this case, the Alang shipwrecking yard. Alang is in Gujurat, and my blood-sister, united by chilli pickle, the Kumar to my Harold, is one Rina Patel. Go see her in the Lambuji and Tinguji show this week at Bats. We're related! I also have an Aunty from Kerala, but that's Kerala, so it doesn't count.

Singapore Rebel (short film) - ok, this one I'm excited about. The story of opposition politician Chee Soon Juan, constantly imprisoned for championing democratic change. The film was banned in Singapore. My mother's Singaporean! And my cousin is a Singaporean human rights lawyer who worked in the same building as JB Jeyaretnam, who also used to keep being fined and imprisoned for being an opposition MP and whenever she bumped into him in the lift, he looked really grumpy and sour, and it's no wonder why! We're related!

And now for the big league. Hong Kong may lead the region and the world in both quantity and quality of its kung fu extravaganza, and no-one can touch Bollywood for musicals. But the award for top national producer of Human Rights documentaries (comprising 63.4% of GDP) is Myanmar. Or, as it was called when my mother was born there, Burma.

Sacrifice, four Burmese girls trafficked into prostitution in Thailand, Burma Report - the May 30th Incident (short), eyewitness accounts and footage of the 1988 military coup, Entrenched Abuse: forced labour in Burma (short) and No Place to Go: internally displaced people in Burma (short).

My mother's family fled Burma in 1954, and it wasn't even that bad yet, comparatively speaking. I still have relatives in Burma, and I don't even want to say where, or what their names are. I've never visited them, and I don't know if I will ever be able to. If I did visit them, I don't know what would happen to them for having contact with foreigners who are known to do things like promote Human Rights Film Festivals, or who have admitted to working for refugee agencies and human rights organisations. I don't know what would happen. I know what could happen of course - I used to be a refugee status officer. We're related.

Who knows what kind of joke I've been making here, or whether it's been very funny. Families are like that; they throw you off.

Good god. Lynnette Forday turned 'hostess' after years on the scrapheap as last-century's token Asian. Nicky Watson in her knickers with a lampshade on her head. It could only be... Yet another campaign to stop atrocities against animals, by instead committing atrocities against people.

The classy event in question is 'Moonbear Madness', a fundraiser for such an obscurely specific animal-welfare cause that you can only assume it was randomly picked as an excuse to throw a pricey Orientalist backroom-stripper party for the confused rich. Yes, crap things happen in China, to animals and people. But when the China Democracy Party was in Aotea Square last week, raising awareness about human rights abuses on the Mainland, did they fundraise with a soft-core bestiality show starring shaved Pandas and Pekinese puppies?

Ah well, maybe they should have. Nicky Watson might have turned up. To, like, protest.

If it had just been dear Nicky getting her tits out again, even with that absurd Chinese headpiece on this invader's ire would not be raised more than is usual. But when the invite follows this up with: "Three maidens from Mongolia will contort themselves for your delight", it's no wonder the word on the street is that not a single one of the purported 'prominent young Asian Aucklanders' invited from a lengthy contact list RSVPed to this. We would have been all pretty worried that John Banks' mates would mistake us for Mongolians and try to stuff twenties down our pants in prospective exchange for some backroom contortionate Asiatic delights.

Fuck. Off.

It was nearly as ridiculous as the time I received a New Zealand First pamphlet in the junk-mail. Do I look like the target market for this crap?

I would however recommend that any real underpaid East-Asian and Southeast-Asian prostitutes who happen to be reading this blog, kit themselves out in extreme bordello glamour this Tuesday night, bowl on up to Opium as 'the help', and exploit the clientele for all they're worth. Take their cash, their food, booze and dignity, get their pants down, take photos and sell them on the net. And dedicate it all to the House of Nancy Peterson/Feng Xiukin, who occupied a far less glamorous position on the spectrum of the Oriental-fetish industry.

On a more positive note: a shout-out to my Aunt Jo Li Ping, who was airlifted out of Saigon thirty years ago. Nice timing Ayi. The anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War also marks the start of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month in the States.

That's right, not only do Asians get their own month in America, they also get to be categorised under the same double-pan-ethnic label as one of the hip pan-ethnicities. How did they manage that? As you'd imagine: hard work; early starts. (Note: guy on the left in this photo totally looks like my dad)